Hey, it’s Fandom Friday again! Let me to a shout out to fellow geek bloggers Super Space Chick and The Nerdy Girle for organizing this, as always. It certainly helps me stay on the blogging bandwagon.

It is January! Where did all the time go? A couple of years ago, we’d all be complaining that we’re still putting 2014 on our checks….but who writes checks anymore?

Let’s get to it, shall we? Five things I absolutely love about Winter.

1. Getting snowed in.

As a stay at home mom, sometimes my only reason to get up early and to leave the house is to take the kiddies to school. I am as eager as they are waiting for the phone call that will tell me that I don’t have to drive through unplowed streets, squeezing the wheel in my hands because other folks don’t know how to drive in the snow. Plus, it’s a great impromptu vacation day supplement with movies, cocoa, and fun. Usually the little ones let me get a little work done too.

2. Hot Drinks

Yes, I love my coffee, but winter is the time I like to try out other hot drinks too! I have recently discovered the love of Chai Latte without going to Dunkin’ Donuts! The magic contained in that K-cup is far beyond Merlin could have ever imagined. There are more sample packs of flavorlicious coffee and teas offered this time of year, natch, than any other. Love it!

3. Cuddling Up!

My husband works for a school system, so when it snows, he usually gets snow day too. If we’re lucky, we get the call the night before and are then able to cuddle up, watching movies and chatting long after the little ones have gone to sleep.

4. Scarves and Hats

If you have to go out in the cold, there’s nothing like snuggling into a warm hat and/or scarf. I’m a compulsive crocheter and knitter, so if you reach out your hand in my house, you will come back with a hat or scarf or both. It’s nice to know that the family–including the dog–is putting these things to good use!

5. Sounds of Silence

There’s nothing like winter silence. It’s that dark moment right before the cold winter sunrise that nothing is stirring, except maybe the wind. It’s quite peaceful and fulfilling.

Hey, it’s Fandom Friday again! Let me to a shout out to fellow geek bloggers Super Space Chick and The Nerdy Girle for organizing this, as always. It certainly helps me stay on the blogging bandwagon.

It’s December! It’s the holiday season. Did you miss my post over at the Luscious Literaries about Five Things I Love about Winter? If so, take a peek over there to see what I’m talking about.

But now it’s time to dust off the old Christmas playing list and get in the mood for snow, Santa and Christmas!

Coming from a totally musical family, I was both a band geek and a chorus nerd. Let me put it perspective – I have a clarinet in the basement somewhere and my own personal copy of Handel’s Messiah. I guess you could say that I’m all about the Christmas music, in several keys and various languages.

The Christmas Song – Nat King Cole

Super classic. Everytime I hear this one, I want to look out of the window to see if it is snowing. If it is, score 110 on Christmas! Nat’s voice is so smooth and mellow on this song and is such melted butter to the ears. Just wonderful to listen to sitting in front of the fire with a cup of hot…spiked…cocoa.

Santa Baby – Eartha Kitt

Come on, it’s Eartha! Who else can be coy and sexy at absolutely the same time. I mean, I’m a huge fan of Madonna, but her version doesn’t touch this one.

O Little Town of Bethlehem

This song makes the choral nerd in me just fly free. The perfection of the melodies, the balance of the voices and the overall lovely arrangement….it’s great listening.

O, Holy Night – Luciano Pavarotti

Mario Lanza, Placido Domingo….I love my tenors, but Pavaratti takes the cake. The purity and clarity of his voice, and the way he can hit those high notes with barely an effort – simply divine – see what I did there?

Do You Hear What I Hear? – Whitney Houston

I just love this song. When it comes on, I stop whatever I’m doing, turn it up and listen. Despite all her other problem, Whitney had a voice of the ages and she does this classic tune justice.

Come back at me….name some of your favorite Christmas songs and leave ’em in the comments!

The movie Star Wars, released May 25, 1977, opened up a whole new world for many children (and adults

Star Wars – Darth Vader (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

) across the nation. Here it was, on the big screen, basically a space opera/fairy-tale complete with a princess. The storyline was easy to follow, simple as black and white, down to Leia’s pure white princess outfit contrasting with Darth Vader’s pure black one. Add the deep voice and ominous timbre of James Earl Jones with that respiration, and you’ve got yourself a villian. It didn’t hurt that the actor, David Prowse (yes, I knew that w/out looking it up) was 6’6″ and Carrie Fisher was only 5’1″.

And how about Peter Cushing? I mean, if he were only second in charge, imagine how bad Darth Vader was?

While I’m not the biggest fan of the “first” three movies, I do appreciate the back story that they convey. Plus, Samuel L. Jackson with a light-saber? Priceless!

I happened to do a bit of Internet-questing and found a list of crazy, wacky holidays. We all know about Black Month, Women’s History Month and Arbor Day, but what about National Zucchini Bread Day, Kindergarten Day and….Garlic Day? These holidays are the best because there’s something for everyone.

Today, April 27th, is “Tell a Story Day”. As an author, this is right up my alley. And so, I shall tell a story. It’s a short one, and it has been seen before, but there’s no story like an old story, I always say.

Grandma Elsie’s Typewriter

It was hidden in the back corner of the storage facility, one of those “dollar for the first month and we’ll rip you off thereafter” places where she had stored Grandmother’s furniture after they’d sold the house. There weren’t many of her things left and they were taking this time to clear out the last of the items. It was time to make final decisions, to sort through the stuff they were donating, selling to the antique dealer or simply throwing away.

The heavy cardboard box was water-damaged and John supported the bottom as he lifted it onto the table. He wiped his hands on the faded blue of his jeans, leaving dark streaks of dust on his outer thighs.

“I think it’s your grandmother’s old typewriter.”

Katie pulled the flaps of the box open and exhaled in surprise. “It is! I wondered where it had gone to when we didn’t find it in the house.” She flashed him an excited smile. “It’s the one that she typed her novels on. I remember from the times I stayed there in the summer. She loved this typewriter.”

John stuck his hands into the dirty, water-damaged box and pulled out the old machine. He placed it on the table where it settled with a few rusty clicks. Most of the keys were rubbed off, the letters illegible. The lesser used keys like the Q and the W were more prominent than the others.

Katie smiled. “Clean it up a bit and it’ll be in great condition.”

“Most of the keys are worn off.” He gave the machine a closer look. The keys he pressed were rusted and scraped against each other.

“Haven’t you memorized the keyboard? Besides, I’m not going to use it. I want it in the office.”

John blew out his breath in the hot enclosure, looked at the concrete ceiling. His Katie was a collector. A discerning one, but a collector just the same. “You’ve got a lot of stuff in the office already.”

“But Jonny-boy…” Her tone was wheedling. “It belonged to my grandmother. Besides, it’ll make a nice conversation piece.” She held up her dirty hands at chest level, pressing the palms together in a pleading gesture. “Please?”

The combination of the dirty hands and the charming look on her face changed his mind. They had spent a lot of time at the beach this summer and her normally honeyed complexion had darkened to a rich shade of coffee. French Roast, he called her, loving the new color that made her dark brown eyes more luminous.

He shrugged, envisioning hours in the garage cleaning the rust off the keys, oiling the mechanism so that while it might not work, it would look like it could.

*

After a few weeks, hard work and about a gallon of WD-40, Katie placed the refurbished typewriter in the corner of her study, sat back and studied it. The machine gleamed in the afternoon light, casting a glow on the polished wood table where it sat. Katie could almost see Grandma Elsie hunched over the keys, a cigarette burning in the ashtray and a cup of tea laced with brandy at her elbow.

Late one night, she was typing away on her laptop when she heard the tap, tap of the typewriter’s keys behind her. Thinking John had snuck in and was playing a trick on her, she turned around, a half smile on her face to scold him for disturbing her writing time.

No one was there.

Katie shook her head and turned back to her computer, tried to get back in the scene she was writing. She had picked up her pace again when the tap, tap, tap of the typewriter made her whip her head around.

“Grandma?” The word slipped out before she could stop it.

Katie stared at the now-quiet typewriter. Her heart pounded in her chest, a throbbing that she felt in her neck and wrists. She drew in a deep breath. Being afraid didn’t enter her mind. Summers with her grandmother were full of things that were not explainable. Mysterious events were dismissed by a casual wave of the hand so often that abnormal became normal.

She smoothed her hands over her skirt, the cotton cool under her hands, and then reached over to her printer tray for a piece of paper. Though the office was warm due to the open window, her arms were ridged with goose bumps. The chair creaked when she got up and walked over to the typewriter. She rolled the white paper against the rubber roller and adjusted it. She went back to her laptop and sat down, her back to the typewriter once again.

Waited.

When the tapping began again, she didn’t turn around. She forced herself to keep her breathing measured so as not to startle the typist.

She sat motionless for about five minutes after the tapping stopped. When she was sure it was done, she got up to retrieve the paper.

Six feet under wasn’t deep enough.

For more free stories from me and other talented authors, check out Shades of the Muse a free story archive for all types of stories. And if you’re a fledgling writer, please feel free to post a story or stories of your own!

This is a guest post by Kymberlyn Reed, whom I had the pleasure to meet on a fiction website. We got acquainted on Facebook, and I dare say, anyone who is a fan of Calvin and Hobbes is alright with me.

Please, enjoy reading her experience in cosplay and leave a comment. Have questions? Leave a comment!

My first experiences with the idea of cosplay happened a year after Star Wars (A New Hope) came out (yes, I am that old). I remember how life-altering that film was for me, a little girl who loathed the weak, simpering “heroines” of Disney films and which populated a great deal of he books I had the misfortune to have read. The moment Princess Leia literally exploded on screen, sassing up Darth Vader without flinching and pretty much rescuing the very guys who were
supposed to be rescuing her, I just knew I wanted to be her, or like her.

I never stopped to think that I couldn’t be Leia and no one ever told me—at least at first—
that I couldn’t because she didn’t look like me. In my neighborhood it wasn’t all that unusual

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for little black girls to be dressed like Cinderella and Snow White for Halloween. None of us
knew there was some sort of “rules”. We did know there were no black princesses and while they were curious as to why, they just co-opted the ones they knew. So for one Halloween with cinnamon bun braids and a dress cobbled together by my great-grandmother–for one moment in my fledgling geek girl life, I felt like I could conquer the universe. Leia represented the kind of power and strength that in real life I lacked and so desperately wanted.

When I attended my first science-fiction convention at The Biltmore Hotel that same year, I also saw my first (and to date only) Klingon Wedding. There were nearly three-hundred people who looked like escaped extras from Paramount Studios (save for the parents of the bride and groom who had that “is this what I sent my children to college for” look). I was surrounded by the
Klingon Empire and people dressed like Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Tom Baker-
era Doctor Whos and several members of Moonbase Alpha (Space 1999). There was even a
guy (I guess) dressed as The Alien who scared people to death, especially in the dark of the film
rooms. I had the unfortunate pleasure to have him seated next to me during a screening of Jason
and the Argonauts–a film that to this day I cannot watch without remembering the too-close
proximity of those jaws to my head.

Good times. Not.

Boy Ninja

Flash forward to my college days. That was when I was introduced to the world of Renaissance Faires. I started as an attendee, fell in love with the whole idea of participating in historical re-enactment, and that next year started my new Faire life as a wench. I was also attending local sci-fi/fantasy cons as well and seeing people dressed as Sailor Moon, G-Force (Battle of the Planets) and of course, superheroes. I saw my first clan of Wolfriders (a la Elfquest) and the cherry on the sundae, the first black woman dressed as Storm and that was such a revelation. For one thing, she was black like me–a rarity at sci-fi/fantasy conventions at the time (thankfully that’s changed) Number two, she looked absolutely AMAZING, with her deep dark skin and that white blonde wig and the whole muscle definition thing. Even then I didn’t know there was an
actual word for what we were doing at the time. I just thought we were dressing up and scaring the mundanes.

Over the years, my forays into cosplay have been less about dressing up as a specific anime

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character (though I have dressed as Emma, the Victorian parlourmaid) and more about creating a persona that I find powerful. You will NEVER find me dressed as Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, but most definitely Mina Harker from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I have portrayed GoGo from Kill Bill, complete with styrofoam and aluminum foil mace and straight
black wig with bangs. Over the years I’ve gravitated more towards Steampunk which for an elder goth like me makes perfect sense, mainly the dark Victorian romantic look. And I happen
to love corsetry.

The past eight or so years I’ve been attending Anime Expo in Los Angeles, the number and diversity of cosplayers seems to grow exponentially, along with the level of complexity when
it comes to making their costumes. I totally respect the time and effort many cosplayers spend in creating as close to the character they’re portraying as possible. Most of the anime/game
characters are completely unknown to me (though I just about squeed when I saw a couple dressed as Dio and Luciola from Last Exile. I also saw several black Alex Rows. And I just
about died when I saw two people dressed as Kamijo and Hizaki from Versailles Philharmonic
Quintet!). On the other hand, I also loved the group of frat boys dressed as Sailor Scouts (hairy
legs and all). I’ve seen black and latina Lolitas, pint-sized Gokus, and mis-matched Luigis.

That, to me is what the overall essence of cosplay is–it’s PLAY. It’s dressing up like someone
you’re not and never will be. I will never have blue hair down to my butt or breasts the size
of floatation devices. My fangs are not real and as comfortable as a corset can be when laced
properly, I would not wear one everyday. But for one (or two) days a year, I can be that person
surrounded by hundreds of other people just like me, and not have to explain anything.